Ed Burns on How Tyler Perry Inspired Him to Revisit the Irish Catholic Family and That Brothers McMullen Sequel

Nearly 17 years after Ed Burns made his filmmaking debut withThe Brothers McMullen, the award-winning indie drama about three Irish Catholic brothers living in Long Island, the writer/director/actor returns to those same cultural roots—which he also explored in 1996’s She's the One—for The Fitzgerald Family Christmas. Re-uniting Brothers McMullen cast members Connie Britton, Michael McGlone, and Burns himself, the drama depicts a family of seven children who spend the first Christmas with their estranged father since he abandoned them two decades ago. The drama effectively examines a mélange of prickly emotional issues and questions about adulthood while, at times, verging into the territory of a genuinely funny comedy.

Just four days afterThe Fitzgerald Family Christmaswas acquired for a November release, Burns sat down with VF.com at the AMC Storys Lounge during the Toronto International Film Festival to discuss Tyler Perry’s unlikely influence on the project, the time that the New York filmmaker tried to make it as a movie star in Hollywood, and his long-awaited Brothers McMullen sequel.

Julie Miller: What made you want to revisit the Irish Catholic family after over 15 years?

Ed Burns: I worked with Tyler Perry last summer on this film called Alex Cross. While we were shooting, he told me that he had just recently re- watched Brothers McMullenand he asked me why that in 15 years, I hadn’t revisited the world thatBrothers McMullen and She's the One had, that Irish-American working-class milieu. Quite honestly, I didn’t have a reason. The story just never presented itself to me. He said, “Please take some advice from me. Think about super-serving your niche. I would imagine that a lot of Irish-American folks out there, who felt a connection to those themes and characters, would love to see another of those kind of films from you. ”

The moment he said it, I wasn’t writing anything, but I knew he was right. I walked into my trailer, opened my laptop, and wrote the first draft in six weeks, which never happens. I knew the world so intimately, it kind of unfolded.

Was it helpful writing that script with Perry nearby, who has also written a series of movies about sprawling families that really identify with one culture?

We talked the entire time. He was writing a script at the same time that I was. We were constantly telling each other where we were with the screenplays. Towards the end of the script, I was having some trouble trying to resolve one of the story beats, so he gave me a little help with that. And also, while making the film, I looked at a bunch of his films and just seeing films about big sprawling families had to influence the writing of this in some way.

Would you consider this your most personal film?

Yes, in that it’s the first time where I sort of started drawing certain things from my extended family’s experiences. I’ve masked it. Looking at my immediate world and my childhood and a lot of my friends, though, I pulled from a lot of their lives.

You’ve made personal films in the past. Has it ever gotten to the point where friends and family members have told you flat out, “You can’t use this in your movie?”

No, not really. My friends who come from big families gave me input, though. One is from a family of nine. One is from a family of 12. And they told me what the dynamics are like within a family of that size—in that the family is usually broken down into two or three different sub-families. You have the oldest kids who have no relationship with the three youngest kids, partly because they were sort of parenting them or there was such a dramatic age split. Also, their perception of their parents is very different, given that the parents were 21 years old when they had the first lot and maybe hadn’t made a lot of money yet. By the time 8, 9, and 10 rolled around, they were near 40. They moved into a nicer house, had more money, were exhausted from parenting.

Where does your character fall?

He is the second-oldest and the first son. And his father walks out on them, so he basically had to become the patriarch of the family. So now that he’s in his 40s, he’s carried the resentment of having to take on that role.

Connie Britton and Ed Burns in The Fitzgerald Family Christmas., By William Rexer.

Your character wears the bulky leather jacket, big cross necklace, and slicked-back hair. Is it fun to dress up in the Long Island wardrobe?

Absolutely. Going back home, any time, I remember when I spotted a guy that I used to know, and his look, and thought that that was exactly how my character, Jerry, is going to dress.

What were you most surprised to discover about revisiting this kind of family?

I think just how well I knew them, and how fun it was to revisit those kitchens and living rooms and bars. To the point where I called my parents and said that the Fitzgeralds need to live in our neighborhood where we grew up. Which one of your friends still live there and do you think they would let us shoot in their house? So they called up a family that I’ve known since I was two years old, the Costellos, and they let us shoot in their house.

New York is such a large part of your identity as a filmmaker. Where do you think you would be if you had moved to Hollywood for good?

I did move to Los Angeles after Saving Private Ryan because I was being told by my agents that this was a big opportunity. I was going to be a movie star. Forget about indie filmmaking. Let’s take a couple of years off and let’s pursue making you into a movie star. So I moved out there for about two years and stayed out there through the making of a movie called 15 Minutes. We shot the last three weeks of 15 Minutesin New York in the summer, and I was home, and I was just like, “What the hell am I doing?” And I just didn’t go back to L.A. And then, immediately, I made Sidewalks of New York.

You’ve been planning a Brothers McMullensequel too. What do you think Barry, Patrick, and Jack are up to these days?

Basically, Mike McGlone’s character ended up marrying Jennifer Jostyn. They went out to California, came back to Long Island, and have three sons, the next generation of McMullens—like 15, 14, and 13 years old, all in a row. He’s doing very well, still very religious. He has sort of become the patriarch of the clan. My character went out to Los Angeles to pursue his filmmaking career, never got married, and has become one of those typical, 40-years-old, never-been-married Hollywood types who is running around chasing young girls. The oldest brother Jack (Jack Mulcahy) and Connie Britton—they are just going through the last stages of a divorce because he couldn’t quit his philandering ways. And they’ve got a couple of kids and I’m not sure whether they will be boys or girls. I want to do that in about three years.

Will you be revisiting the Fitzgeralds too?

I think, right after that, I want to go to the Fitzgeralds sequel. The working title isThe Fitzgerald Wake. I just don’t know who I’m going to kill off yet. [Laughs.]